Growth hormone is important not only for linear body growth, but is also important for the maintenance of body composition, metabolism and heart function in adult life. In fact, treatment with growth hormone is employed in both adults and children suffering from growth hormone deficiency. Treatment with growth hormone has been shown to reduce body fat, increase fat-free mass, increase muscle strength, improve bone mass and well-being. These beneficial effects associated with growth hormone treatment suggest that growth hormone treatment may further be useful for the treatment of osteoporosis, frailty in the elderly, complicated fracture, cardiomyopathy, obesity and some nitrogen-wasting conditions resulting from, for example, AIDS, chronic dialysis, catabolic disease and glucocorticoid treatment. Johan Svensson, Exp. Opin. Ther. Patents, 2000 10(7) 1071–1080; Ankersen et al., DDT, 1999, 4(11) 497–506. Moreover, growth hormone therapy is also been explored with a view towards reversing changes associated with aging.
Current methods for administering growth hormone are invasive in that synthetic growth hormone must be administered by daily injection. Therefore, if an orally administered secretagogue could be introduced that is safe, efficacious, well tolerated, it would provide an attractive treatment alternative to current growth hormone treatment.
Growth hormone secretagogues are synthetically produced peptides and non-peptides that stimulate the endogenous production and/or release of growth hormone by acting on one or more specific receptors at both pituitary and hypothalamic levels. Accordingly, orally active growth hormone secretagogues could offer attractive alternatives to traditional growth hormone therapy, thus providing a more convenient means to treat a wider array of diseases or disorders associated with growth hormone levels in patient circulation.